


Bittersweet Cold

by kattastic99



Series: In Death Are You Redeemed [4]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Adam Taurus Redemption Arc, And only one of the OCs is named!, Anti-Faunus Racism (RWBY), Assassination, Blood, Death, Gen, Murder, Several crimes, That's also the only one that dies, ok cool thats a dedicated tag thats VERY handy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:06:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27332398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattastic99/pseuds/kattastic99
Summary: After weeks of planning, Adam Taurus finally strikes another name off his list of people that he personally needs to die. That it benefits Mantle as a whole is part of it, but certainly not all of it.
Series: In Death Are You Redeemed [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993420
Kudos: 10





	Bittersweet Cold

Doing jobs in Mantle, taking out the scum in Solitas’ smaller towns and cities, even the targets he’d eliminated in Mantle, so easy compared to this. Even all the way up to actively hunting down the powerful and the elite in Mantle, Adam had only had to wear his new bull mask. Sure, Mantle’s security was at least  _ there _ when the towns he’d ‘visited’ had very much been absolute cakewalks, but Adam had been evading security cameras for a long, long time. Not having any backup or support made it more difficult to skip between blind-spots in surveillance systems, and he’d been forced to improve his rather rusty skills in hacking and rewiring security systems and alarms, but it was doable. He’d managed to get by with wearing his same new outfit, and simply took his mask off when he wasn’t doing illegal things. 

Before, when he was…. Adam chewed his lip as he stared at the building he was casing from his perch on a neglected Atlas rooftop. When he was angrier, and pettier, and when he relished every opportunity he had to snuff out a human life, it was easier to do these types of things even on his own because nobody who saw him survived. Now that he’d been forced to re-evaluate himself and his world-view, it turned out that not every single human being alive was worthless scum. Happy days all around, until the unfortunate fact that sparing people meant witnesses reared its head. He  _ could _ just kill everyone who saw him, but that would take a lot of time and energy and draw far more attention than he wanted. Also the whole ‘killing innocent civilians’ thing was something he was trying to work on. 

Adam raised his collapsible telescope and peered through it to the rather disgustingly opulent manor he was casing. He’d already done a frankly exhausting amount of research to prepare for this, but last minute observations were still important. He couldn’t kill all the guards, not because it would be immoral (Adam always gave them the chance to flee, as money wasn’t as important as being alive) but because it would be too noticeable. He was wearing his brand new active-duty outfit, all greys and whites from top to bottom because Atlas was absurdly monochromatic and camouflage was child’s play. His mask for this event wasn’t even a mask, but a rather sophisticated helmet he’d put together in his spare time. It acted as a gas mask on top of distorting his voice when he spoke. It resembled a bike helmet for the most part, aside from the grey-white colors and the lack of a visible visor. One-way glass had its drawbacks, since it meant he couldn’t protect against flash-bangs, but it was more important for him to lack any features. He even re-colored Euphrates’ sheathe for the occasion. 

_ Alright, check-list time, _ Adam thought to himself as he collapsed the telescope and stashed it in his jacket.  _ Gloves to keep fingerprints out of this, the get-up should hide my identity so long as I’m not too flashy with my sword in front of a camera, I’ve got an optimal route planned, the servants’ map of the camera system should still be up-to-date…  _ Adam took a deep breath and let it out in a calm exhale.  _ Samuel Belknap, I hope you’re having a good night’s rest in that luxurious bed you bought with money made off the blood and suffering of my people, because you won’t be having another one. _

Adam hopped off the roof and turned around mid-air, grabbing onto a narrow ledge ten feet down and using the ridiculous architecture of this godsforsaken city to make his way down the side of the building with ease. It was the middle of the night and he was taking the pathways mostly used by employees for the various rich assholes who lived around here. The building he’d just slid down from was a very exclusive apartment building, each of them costing more money than Adam had ever made ‘legitimately’ in his life. Certainly not more money than he’d ever generated, of course. It was his labor, and the labor of countless faunus and downtrodden humans, that created the value in the world. Without them, mines were tunnels and rocks, meals were bins of ingredients, and stylish clothes were sheets of fabric and material. The owner of a clothing brand that made millions a year because their outfits cost twenty thousand dollars, they did not  _ earn _ that money. The material cost of any of their outfits was likely less than ten lien, and it was the workers with blistered fingers and aching backs who took those materials and made a dress that earned their employer thousands. They likely saw a tenth of a percent of that money themselves. 

Samuel Belknap himself made most of his money on stocks in the Schnee Dust Company, and spent millions of lien a year pressuring the Council to sign laws into place that benefited the company and gutted public services. Because desperate people would be in more need, and thus they would have to buy more things. Before Atlas was raised into the sky, Mantle was a massive and sprawling city with a distinct upper and lower district, but the city as a whole enjoyed the same defenses and the same atmospheric control systems. Not content with their conveniences benefitting anybody besides themselves, the elite pushed for innovation and literally  _ took _ those public infrastructures with them into the sky, leaving Mantle with a bare-bones heating system and ever-crumbling walls. 

Adam couldn’t even see the stars from a good portion of Mantle anymore. The sky was filled with Atlas and its tethers, and gods how Adam hated those things. Atlas wasn’t in danger of flying off without them, they were slack and pointless. Well, not  _ pointless _ ; they served as a stark reminder to the citizens of Mantle; Atlas may be in the sky, but Mantle was  _ chained _ to it, and would never be free of it. He knew the official reason, of course, ‘to symbolize the connection between the cities,’ but it was a load of shit. The tethers hung limp in the wind, lifeless ropes that had dedicated huntsman patrols to make sure nobody even so much as spray painted the massive concrete pillars keeping them in place in Mantle. Massive concrete pillars that took up three city blocks each, every one of them once the site of apartment buildings. But the landlords lived in Atlas, and that land belonged to  _ them, _ so they signed it over to Atlas and everyone just had to move. Nevermind that the people who’d lived there could barely afford it to begin with, and nevermind that there wasn’t anywhere to move  _ to, _ that wasn’t the Council’s problem. 

Belknap had also been lobbying against the proposal for more homeless shelters in Mantle. As the ornate gate to his estate came into view, Adam grinned behind his helmet. He avoided the gate entirely, of course, slinking around the wall that separated the estate from the surrounding area of the city to reach the spot he’d picked out nearly two weeks ago; there was a spot on the west wall near the southwestern corner that was a blind spot in the external cameras. There were four other blind spots like it, but Adam had chosen this one because it overlapped with a gap in the guard patrols for a solid fifteen minutes. It was a simple matter to just hop up to the top of the wall and swing over the spikes to land on the lush green yard on the other side. Another fun little feature Belknap had just had to have, despite Atlas being freezing cold; it took quite a lot of fire dust to keep his grounds heated enough for his lawn to thrive, but luckily the SDC was so very generous as to donate it to him for free as part of a ‘charity.’ A favor done for an important financial backer and with the bonus of a tax break on top of it! It was funny how very convenient Atlas’ laws were for everybody that mattered. 

He didn’t even have to use his semblance to make it across the yard without being spotted, although this handy window was going to close in ten minutes so he wouldn’t be able to leave this way. The manor had a pretty high-end security system, even on top of all the guards and cameras, but security systems could be finicky and Belknap certainly didn’t want Mantle technicians  _ entering _ his home, so there was an external hub on the south side of the mansion enclosed in a little cage with an electronically locked security gate. Damaging or disabling the gate would trigger a separate alarm, so the only way to get in quietly would be to have the passcode, and Belknap didn’t keep any physical copy of it to prevent it from being stolen. Unfortunately for Belknap, the company he hired to install it, while Atlas based, outsourced its work to a handful of smaller Mantle temp-worker companies, and Belknap was always futzing with his system so they were called rather frequently. And Mantle security was a joke.

The keypad chirped happily when Adam entered the security code and the gate unlocked nice and quietly. The security system itself, however, was a lot harder a nut to crack. Hacking into it was beyond Adam’s skills at the moment, and destroying this external access hub wouldn’t disable the system itself because it was one of two, with the other inside. Adam grabbed at the access panel and tugged, the metal sheet pulling free with only a hint of resistance. He ignored the terminal completely and pulled out a leather roll from his jacket, unfurling it on the floor and pulling several tools from their holsters. While he couldn’t hack the security system, he didn’t have to; software ran on hardware, and Atlas put a lot more energy into fortifying its software than they did their hardware. A handful of stripped wires snipped and rewired with electrical tape later, and the entire upper northeastern quarter of the mansion’s security system was down. It was still  _ functioning, _ but the signals weren’t making it back to the external hub anymore and the alarm wouldn’t sound unless both of them got the same signal at the same time. 

Adam replaced the panel and tucked his tools away before sliding the roll back into his jacket. With that taken care of, it was time to climb. He had four minutes left before the next patrol would come within sight of this spot, so he re-engaged the security gate too. Then it was a simple matter of climbing the side of the mansion; there were so many ornate ledges and decorations and fancy useless windows and awnings that Adam would have had a harder time getting to his bed when he was ten. It was in the mines, so-

That was a train of thought Adam derailed immediately, because now was not the time to go down memory lane. Especially since memory lane was such a shit hole. Samuel’s bedroom had several external windows, and it was on the top floor, so once he was on the roof he just had to b-line it over to the edge of the roof just above it. There were guards up here too, of course, and Adam was able to walk up behind the one stationed closest to where he’d climbed up from. He slid Euphrates from its sheath and slammed the bottom of the hilt against the back of the guard’s head, spiking them into the floor face-first. Their aura held up, but they were clearly dazed. One especially bitter kick to the side of their head later, though, and they were out for the count. Adam pulled his sheathe off his back and held it in his left hand as he darted over to the next nearest guard. He used some of the bulky air vents and heaters for cover, but the guard saw him just before he was ready to strike. Adam slammed Euphrates back into its sheath and pointed the hilt at them. “In-” was all they got out before the gravity-dust circuits in Euphrates sent it flying out of the scabbard with so much force that when the hilt slammed into their face their head snapped back with a sickening crack, and they collapsed. 

Adam reversed the circuit, and before Euphrates even touched the ground it was yanked back into its sheath. “Shit,” he muttered quietly. Adam approached the collapsed guard and crouched down. Their aura wasn’t shattered, so they were alive, but he had no way of knowing in what condition. Their neck was broken for sure, but if they were alive then their spinal cord was probably alright. Probably. He grabbed the communicator off their belt-clip and pressed the panic button, then tossed it in the direction of the first guard. They’d flock to that and see both of the downed guards, giving him time that he desperately needed. Adam booked it for the edge, and just barely managed to stay out of sight of the guards heading towards the emergency signal. 

He repeated the same maneuver he’d used earlier, dropping off the edge and twisting mid-air to grab the window ledge, but this time he pulled himself out and balanced on that ledge as he pulled out his switchblade. It clicked into place and he activated its fire-dust reserves. The metal began to glow, and while it made him a bit nervous he ignored it to slowly press the blade through the glass of the window. It wasn’t actually made of glass; Belknap was paranoid and insisted that all of his windows be bullet-proof, so they were mostly made of specially treated layers of plastics. It took about a minute for Adam to cut a hole big enough for him to slip through, and then he was in. 

The bedroom was about as lavish as he expected; the floor was made of cherry oak but the majority of it was covered up by an intricate Mistralian rug, embroidered with a gorgeous depiction of Mistral as it was before the Great War. Rugs like this were extremely rare due to the ban and destruction of artistic expressions of beauty before the War; how Belknap had even found this let alone bought it was a mystery Adam couldn’t care less about. All of the furniture looked to be hand-carved, and Adam glanced up at the ceiling to see a glittering crystal chandelier. The rug made his footsteps even quieter than they already would have been as he approached the bed; it was huge, with golden-edged silk sheets in a pastel blue. Part of him wanted to take a glove off just to feel that fabric, but he wasn’t stupid. Clutching a pillow that was also embroidered with a design, this one just some flowers, was Samuel Belknap himself. He was asleep, comfortable beneath his blanket in his bed in his lavish bedroom at the top of his opulent mansion. 

Everything in this room was a symbol of suffering; every dresser was here because countless people worked away in miserable conditions, hungry and likely ill; children wore rags and ate scraps because it was all their parents could afford, and they were honestly some of the lucky ones because there were plenty of orphans working in the mines alongside the people who’d had to watch their parents die in the same tunnels they were in. People worked to exhaustion and beyond, denied basic rights and safety because those things cost money, money that Adam knew these people didn’t even  _ remotely _ need. Killing Samuel Belknap wouldn’t make these things change overnight, Adam knew that perfectly well. But without Samuel around, his money would be locked up for a while behind inheritance debates and the weight of that money would be pulled from the well of support keeping the SDC the powerhouse of suffering that it was. Without the Belknap fortune backing it into a corner, the Council would have a little more reason to  _ listen _ , and people like Robyn Hill would have a better chance at fixing things. 

That was the mistake he’d made, Adam knew, one of many. He couldn’t make things better, he couldn’t improve the world for the faunus, he couldn’t lead them to a brighter future. All Adam could do was destroy. But, while he was useless in building a better world, he could cut away pieces of the old one so the people who  _ could _ make a better world would have the room to build it. 

Samuel turned over in his sleep, burying the pillow in his arms underneath his frame. Adam drew Euphrates and wrapped both hands around the hilt, the blade hovering above Samuel’s sleeping form with all the weight of a guillotine. The world dimmed, and Euphrates shined with purpose and with promise, and Adam drove his arms down as hard as he could. The tip of the blade drove straight through Samuel’s right side, cleaving through his ribs and puncturing both lungs. Adam had wanted to strike his heart as well, but judging by the way Samuel’s eyes snapped open and he contorted in pain, he must have missed. He yanked the blade free, and Samuel rolled over with terror in his fading eyes. His aura flickered into place now that he was awake, but it was far too late and the damage was far too severe for his aura to do a damn thing. He coughed, blood splashing from his mouth as it leaked from the hole in his side, pouring into his sheets and completely covering the embroidered flowers on his pillow. 

Samuel looked at Adam, and raised a shaking hand towards him. Adam just stood there and watched, watched as Samuel’s hand fell to the sheet already red with his blood and twitched once, twice, a third time as Samuel stared at him. Adam watched as his eyes dulled, and waited another thirty seconds to make sure he wasn’t going to start moving again. Samuel’s blood dripped from Adam’s sword, hanging at his side, and he swished it through the air to send the blood splashing off his sword and onto the floor. Blood was already seeping into the rug from the soaked sheets hanging off the bed, a red so dark it was almost black slowly covering the serene landscape of Mistral. 

_ Halfway done now, _ Adam thought. He slid Euphrates back into its sheath and turned his back to the dead man he’d carved into the world and walked across the room to the bedroom door. With the rooftop guards occupied and this entire section of the house without a working security system, his best point of exit was going to be the music room down the hall. Samuel didn’t live alone, but it was two in the morning and his estranged wife lived on the second floor with their daughter. Adam left the bedroom door open as he left, and encountered a problem he hadn’t foreseen. 

He knew, of course, that Samuel’s daughter was six, which was why he figured she would be asleep. What he hadn’t known was that she sometimes had nightmares, and what he had never had a chance to know for himself was that scared children will go to their parents for comfort. Another thing he didn’t know was that Samuel’s wife took very strong sleeping medication and their daughter knew that she wouldn’t wake up at all, and so often went to her father for comfort. 

“Who are you?” asked the little girl in pajamas that likely cost more than Adam’s apartment. She was human, of course, like her parents, but she was still a child. “Is my daddy awake? I had a bad dream.” Adam couldn’t move, and the girl tried to peek behind him to see into her father’s room. Without even thinking, Adam stepped to the side to block her view. 

This little girl wasn’t responsible for the actions of her father. She was raised in a mansion, born to money stolen from starving workers and surrounded by a life of luxury that came at the cost of countless innocent lives. She would grow up and have the world handed to her on a silver platter polished with the blood of Adam’s people, and odds were high that she would complain about the bones of his fellows being so difficult to walk on top of. But right now, standing in front of him, was a six year old little girl who’d had a bad dream and wanted to climb into bed with her father. 

“I had to send him away for a while,” Adam found himself saying. His voice came through his helmet digitized and distorted, but audible. “I know she’s asleep, but your mom can help. You should go to her.” He was sweating, and his stomach was boiling with feelings he couldn’t even begin to name as the girl sniffled and nodded. 

“Okay….” she said, and turned around and walked down the hall. She had to have still been half asleep, surely even young children weren’t this blindly trusting. Not that Adam would really know. Desperate to avoid the reasons for that, Adam turned as well and walked down the hall in the opposite direction to the music room. His heart was pounding like a drum inside his head, practically echoing around the inside of his helmet. The music room was unlocked, of course, and unlike the master bedroom this room’s windows actually opened. He flung open the one nearest the door and slid through it, grabbing the ledge with one hand as he dropped down to the next ledge beneath it. He kept doing that until his feet were back on the grass, and Adam used his semblance to dash through the blind spot on this side of the house, uncaring if he was spotted by a guard. If he was, he wasn’t made aware of it, and he scaled the wall and spikes just as easily as he had on his way in. 

As he darted through servant paths and empty gardens and parks, Adam’s mind raced. He tried to think about what had happened, tried to analyze his responses; was he happy? Did he enjoy ending the man’s life? Did he feel sorry about the suffering he had caused, the woman who would mourn and the daughter who would never be the same? In the past, the answer would have been that he didn’t give even half of a shit, because humans were scum and he wanted them dead. But he was no longer blinded by hatred, and he knew even humans could be good people. He would have preferred if he hadn’t run into the girl, of course, but mostly he was glad that his helmet hid his horns so she wouldn’t ID him as a faunus. But if that was all he cared about, why did he actively spare her from seeing her father’s corpse? Even though he’d protected his voice, it was a pointless risk to speak to her. Had he been merciful or deceitful? Had he protected a little girl or bought himself time to escape? Was it possible to be both? Did one overshadow the other, render one or both meaningless? 

He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure he ever  _ could _ know. But he knew that he had to finish the job, because killing Samuel may have been the goal but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. Adam had gotten  _ up _ to Atlas the day before as Seth Umber, Pietro’s volunteer down at the pharmacy and as of yesterday officially hired aid. Pietro had been called up to Atlas for three days to do work on something or other for the General, and he’d hired Adam to tend to his Atlas office since people would hear he was back and try to visit but he would be busy with whatever the hell. He’d brought this gear with him, and Pietro hadn’t asked because he was a very smart man and he knew that Adam was going to do something that he did not want Pietro to know about. And he was kind enough to let him. 

So his ride  _ out _ of Atlas was a day away, and he had an entire cover identity that revolved around him remaining here and even going in to work when the sun was up in like five hours. He had a nightmare excuse already lined up as for why he was inevitably going to show up exhausted from little sleep, but he had to get back to his hotel room first. Pietro hadn’t exactly given him a choice, intent on spoiling him with one of the fanciest hotels in Atlas, but Adam had hated it every step of the way. He knew Pietro meant well, and didn’t want to refuse his gift, but… Well, he was a faunus, and this was the fanciest hotel in Atlas. Checking in had taken forty minutes because they refused to believe he had a room and then tried to have him arrested for theft and fraud when he showed them the receipts confirming his reservation. Even after that was cleared up, they made him wait another hour before finally giving him his room key, and when he tried to order room service he was politely informed that the system had glitched and they were unable to confirm the payment for his orders, even though room service had been included in his reservation. 

He’d had to sneak out, and now he had to sneak back in. He’d memorized which window went to his room, although he’d also left it open so he probably didn’t have to. Scaling the building was as easy as ever, and if the hotel had a problem with him showering at three in the morning after stuffing his specialist gear into the case he’d bought for it all, then that sure sucked for them. 

By the time Adam finally collapsed into bed after making a mental note to steal as much of that shampoo and body wash as he could when he left, there were about four hours left until he had to be up and ready to go to work as Seth Umber the bull faunus charity case Pietro was sponsoring lately. 

Adam woke up two hours later soaked in sweat and gasping for breath, the nightmare full of searing metal and freezing ice already fading away. 

**Author's Note:**

> Adam: -does an objectively good thing for once-  
> Adam: This feels wrong
> 
> I've been lightly hinting at Adam's emotional constipation for a while but it REALLY shines through here. Also I tried not to think of the Grinch during that scene but I really, really couldn't not think of the Grinch. Also of note is that there were TWO options for the ecnounter I wanted Adam to have in this house; either he would have to deal with the child, or he'd get baited by a huntress. That one might happen in a later story. I still don't know how I'm doing these and have no idea how many I'll be able to write. I think the way I'm doing them now isn't sustainable but I'm going to try to find other ways, which I've never been able to do before. But I've never been able to write this consistently or this much before either, so with luck whatever is letting me do this is going to let me do some other stuff as well.
> 
> Does he regret his past? Yes. But a good question to ask is WHY.


End file.
